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The importance of small family farms in global food security | Monika Barthwal-Datta | TEDxOrange
The importance of small family farms in global food security | Monika Barthwal-Datta | TEDxOrange Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi 20 Views • 6 years ago

There are 1.5 billion small family farmers, men and women, who live and work on around 475 million family farms, that are no more than 2 hectares in size. Monika reminds us up to 80% of all food consumed in the world are grown by these farmers, and these people are at the forefront of our fight for food security in the face of climate change.

Monika Barthwal-Datta is a Senior Lecturer in International Security in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW. Growing up, Monika lived and studied in a number of countries, including India (where she comes from), Japan, New Zealand, Uganda and ultimately the UK where she completed her postgraduate studies. While studying for her MScEcon in Security Studies (Aberystwyth University) and then her PhD in International Security (Royal Holloway College, University of London), Monika worked as a freelance broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service Radio. She moved to Sydney in late 2010 to take up a two-year research fellowship on Food Security in Asia at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney, and moved to UNSW Australia in mid-2012. Monika’s research focuses on international security from ‘non-traditional’ perspectives that prioritise the needs and concerns of those who are least powerful and marginalised.

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Deadly Diamonds: Zimbabwe [2009]
Deadly Diamonds: Zimbabwe [2009] Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi 20 Views • 6 years ago

Deadly Diamonds (2009): Could Zimbabwe be suspended from the global diamond trade in the aftermath of the massacre at the Marange diamonds fields?

Did Robert Mugabe’s security forces seize control of a lucrative diamond field by gunning down hundreds of miners? With shocking evidence now uncovered, Zimbabwe's diamond trade faces suspension."We were told here are the guns, sitting in the truck, do you want to stay?" says Andrew Cranswick, CEO of the mining company who owns the rights to mine diamonds in Marange. After his company was evicted, the Marange fields were opened up to the people and tens of thousands of Zimbabweans came to dig, paying the police a commission. Yet the police didn't always play fair - "$15 million worth of diamonds were confiscated", says one former miner and soon the police were replaced by Mugabe's own military. "Mugabe needed a way to buy the loyalty of the army" says Ken Roth, "the military were ordered to kill".In the first week of November, helicopter gunships launched a massacre on the Marange diamond fields. Evidence has been collected of 200 deaths. Those who weren't killed were raped or crippled. "They told us if we wanted to go home we had to sleep with the men", says one woman, "the soldiers watched and laughed". Next month, the Kimberley process, the international body charged with stopping trade in conflict diamonds, will decide whether Zimbabwe should be suspended. Yet with many Western governments involved in Zimbabwe's diamond trade, a former delegate of the Kimberley process believes this deadly business may yet be protected.

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